Kawabata, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of a wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan, the snowiest region on earth. It is there, at an isolated mountain hotspring, that the wealthy sophisticate Shimamura meets the geisha Komako, who gives herself to him without regrets, knowing that their passion cannot last. Their affair can only have one outcome. Yet in chronicling its doomed course, Kawabata creates a novel dense in implication and exalting in its sadness. Translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker.

"Snow Country is a work of beauty and strangeness, one of the most distinguished and moving Japanese novels to have appeared in this country."--New York Herald Tribune